In Memoriam: Paul B. Austin -- Part 1

[Newhampster]

Our last dive – in memoriam – Paul B. Austin​

On the morning of the 28th of May, my brother, Paul, and I were starting the sixth day of a 7 day live-aboard dive trip to Exuma. It was promising to be another great Bahamian day– sunny, bright, 92 or so degrees (F – or about 33 degrees C). The passengers were all up and eating breakfast by 7:30 or so when the ship went underway towards our next dive location.

By 9:00, everyone was getting antsy, (re)setting up their gear, checking it and waiting for the ship to get to its destination, Victory Reef. With the hope that we’d be in the water before 9:40, we were all well on the way to being all suited up – minus BC, Tank and Fins –before 9:30. The water had been a bit chilly for most of our dives on this trip – the water temperature dipped to 76 degrees Farenheit (24 C) at the bottom of more than one dive and no one was reluctant to don 3 mm neoprene.

The boat’s engines droned on. We got hotter and hotter, the sweat pouring out of our wet suits. Finally, we slowed to a halt and the crew tied us to a mooring. Time to put on our BCs and the rest of our gear and hit the water!

Two of the crew on the dive deck, Layne and Rob, let us know there was some significant current at this site. There were probably 8 other divers who were getting in the water ahead of us and we weren’t rushing to get in. Let’s see what its like when the other folks hit the water. Well, a few went down and that was that. No problems. But a few didn’t make it down. A couple from the North Carolina club bailed out. One was on a hang line, suspended at about 45 degrees by the current. The other bobbed up by a trailing line some 50 feet behind the boat soon after submerging, complaining that the current was too severe.

Paul and I checked each other’s gear. Two full cylinders and a full pony. Paul was carrying a 100 cu ft Aluminum cylinder and I had an 80 plus a redundant 19 cu ft pony bottle. All well rigged – this was our 21st dive of the trip and 47th lifetime for him, 189th for me. His form and skills had been improving over the trip (and they hadn’t been bad to start with).

We also talked about the current, at least three times, two on the dive deck and once on the dive platform right before taking our giant strides into the water. On the deck, we talked about how to manage the current. We’d already had one heavy current dive earlier in the week and I showed him the value of “hitting the deck”, staying on the bottom and, if necessary, pulling himself along the bottom with his hands if needs be. He got that. We also talked about aborting right after entering – no problem, we can always wait for the boat to come around and pick us up (and Paul had his dive alert to call them, as he had on one earlier dive on this trip).

We also talked about descending using the down line versus trying to swim to the mooring line and using that versus just playing rock and diving for the bottom. The mooring line was out. We’d be halfway to Massachusetts before we ever got to the mooring line – or so we were joking. The down line wasn’t a great idea either. So we were both going to dive for a free, rapid descent to the bottom – and if his ears bothered him, he could just pop to the surface and we’d get picked up…

On the dive platform, I double checked our readiness and Paul said he was good to go. It was now 10:02 AM. If we have to abort, just abort in the water. “No shame there. Still sure you want to go?” “Roger that.”

I was first in and played rock. No air in my BC, turned face down, butt up and kicked for the bottom. A pretty painless descent. Part way down, I flared to slow, looked up to see how Paul was doing, saw him making for the bottom pretty well and turned back into a falling sack of rocks.

I flared out again at about 70 feet, worked on adjusting my buoyancy and settled softly, knees first into the sandy bottom (80 feet). Paul was on his way down too. He reached the bottom – right where I was – maybe 15 seconds after I did. I gave him the OK sign and he held his hand up, indicating “pause for a minute”, drumming the four main fingers of his right hand on his chest, implying that he wanted to rest because he had worked real hard on the way down. I thought that a bit odd because it didn’t seem like a strenuous descent to me (even though some other divers on the boat bailed before getting below 20 feet). Maybe I got lucky.

After a minute or so, Paul held up the OK sign and I reciprocated. We had planned to go past the mooring line and over the edge of the wall. Typically, I led the way on many (not all) of our dives this week. On this one, Paul raised himself off the deck and started kicking hard, into the current, staying close to the bottom. We passed the mooring line (one of the other divers – LT I think – was hanging on it 15 feet above the bottom and looking a little like a pendant.

Paul kept kicking. I made a note to myself to repeat to him the value of the “kick—glide—kick—glide” style when we got back on the boat. And he was kicking from the hip, something probably not optimal for the split fins he was using. He was pushing hard, moved closer to the deck and moved into a channel that ran at a 30 degree angle to the top of the wall – good move but he wasn’t deep enough in it so he’d still be working hard. We hit the crest of the wall and went about 10 feet when I started worrying how much air he might have, given how hard he had kicked. I beeped him with my “mini-hammerhead” noise maker and he turned. I pointed to my console and he checked his. One finger then three. Damn! We were supposed to turn at 1500 psi, not 1300! Time to turn around and head up! Another point to raise during the surface interval.

As we headed back, I saw Blake wandering along. I flashed him the signs for “do you see the boat?” and “where’s the boat?” and got a clear “I don’t know” from him so the three of us, Paul, Blake and I made our ascent together. Paul signaled me at around 50 feet, asking if we should stop there…and I said no. (On most dives of this depth – 85 foot bottom – we had been doing a preliminary stop for 3 minutes at half our maximum depth … and another stop for 3 or more minutes at 15 feet.) I had no intention of getting any more blown by the current than was going to happen with a normal safety stop at 15 feet. Besides, I thought, he was probably tight on air. So I waived that off and all three of us continued upward in a controlled fashion (less than 30 feet per minute).

We all crossed the 20 foot level and stopped ascending around 15 feet. We were within 10-15 feet of each other. And so we hung there, freestyle, offgassing nitrogen and watching our computers count down. At one point I saw Paul bobbing towards 10 feet and kicking his way back down. Maybe, I thought, he was right that he was slightly underweighted. Maybe he needed one more pound of lead (even though on other dives, he seemed sort of just right).

When my computer timed out, indicating I could ascend to the surface, I signaled Blake and Paul that I was going up to look for the boat. Extending my hand above my head, I broke the surface and spun around, looking for the boat. Blake’s head broke the surface right as the boat came into view. The boat seemed a hundred or two hundred feet away. And I saw the bright yellow line (with floats) that was streaming back from the boat. We were within easy range of the line – not beyond its end.

I looked around and didn’t see Paul so I stuck my face in the water and saw him several feet down. That was strange. I started to descend, honked my noisemaker and saw him start to ascend. We both made it to the surface and started to swim to the line. I partially inflated my BC and swam on a course almost perpendicular to the line (to intersect with it quickly). So did he. He was swimming faster than I was and made it to the line before I did. When I got to the line, I turned to my left to check the position of the boat and of Blake and finished filling my BC at the same time. Blake was swimming on a diagonal, halfway between a vector towards the line and a vector towards the boat.

-- The rest of the story is in the first response to this post. (The board made me cut this into two pieces)​

The enclosed diver picture was taken the night before Paul's last dive. Paul is on the left, I'm on the right. In the picture, we were getting ready for a night dive.

 

[Newhampster]

I heard my brother yell “Help!” and turned my head and body almost 180 degrees to face him, thinking “what’s up? Is he trying to attract a lift back to the boat?” He was less than 10 feet from me. As I turned, he said loudly “I can’t breathe!” His head was out of the water. I responded immediately: “Inflate your BC!” He responded, coming hard towards me, “I’m out of air!” He was almost on top of me and I thought I saw some panic in his eyes.

As I started to go for my “octopus” (redundant second stage), I asked myself “what’s the protocol for dealing with a panicked diver?” We had gone through that in Open Water training but that was 4 years ago. As I started to recall that, he was gripping my left shoulder with his right hand. I got to my “octopus” to hand to him, started to pull it off its clip on my BC (staring down at it) and I felt his hand let go. I raised my eyes and head to look at him only to see him sinking like a rock beneath the surface of the water.

The only thought that went through my mind was “Oh ****!” as I did a complete flip into the water and started after him. I felt my flipper-encased feet flying in the air as I flipped. I fought my way down – with a full BC, watching him sink…

What raced through my mind right then?

He’s dead. He was motionless as he fell. He’d been fully alive on the surface.

Damn! I can’t let him get away from me. We will never find the body!

You died on me!

Damn!

I caught up to him, second regulator at the ready and saw his motionless, lifeless-looking body and face as I went to feed him the regulator. His mouth was partially open and inert. No response.

Damnit! Don’t die on me.

You died on me, you SOB!

I pushed on the regulator purge button, trying to force the mouthpiece into his mouth as I tried to flood his mouth and nose with air and pull him to the surface. I had a full BC (a tropical weight Zeagle Escape with a 22 pound bladder) and kicked hard so it wasn’t long before we broke through.

On the surface, I fumbled for a moment, pulling my octopus away from his mouth as I went for his BC oral inflator hose and filled his BC with air. I was incoherently calling for help as I did that. With the BC full, I turned my head around and found the boat and yelled “HELP!” and I could hear Blake yelling for help and motioning as well.

I kept trying to keep him stable in the water so he could breathe while simultaneously trying to feed him air from my octopus. I had a passing worry about how long I could stay there, doing this, and realized I could be doing it for a long, long, time as we drifted further and further from the boat.

I saw someone dive from the boat and swim towards us… Layne, the biggest (and probably the fastest) guy on the crew.

It felt like we were at it for a week but it was probably only a short while. Layne was coming to help. I think he paused along the way to figure out what Blake was saying but I’m not at all certain of that.

All the while, we’re drifting further from the boat in the current.

Finally, Layne arrives. He gets on Paul’s other side. He asks how long he’s been down. I tell him it’s been at least 2 minutes. Who knows? At the time, I thought it was probably more but I also recognized that I didn’t really know. He tries to remove Paul’s neoprene hood (it was a hood-vest combo) but realizes that isn’t going to work. He starts mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and tells me to keep Paul steady and upright in the water. He takes a momentary break and motions to the boat and then goes right back to the mouth-to-mouth effort.

The crew on the boat starts banging something loudly – probably a lead weight or sledge hammer on some part of the boat – to warn divers in the water that they’re starting up. It seems like this takes forever too, but it probably wasn’t long before they fired up the engines and came around to pick us up.

They brought the dive platform (on the stern) within several feet of us and we maneuvered over. I don’t remember the details here. People were shouting down to us as we approached. I shouted up that I was OK, it was my brother who was down. They pulled his BC off, pulled him onto the dive platform, evaluated for maybe 2 seconds and carried him up the stairs to the dive deck and put him on the deck, out of the sun.

The crew worked and worked and worked on him. So did a couple of the divers. I just stood there and watched. Counting off the CPR compressions – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 – then mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, the cadence of CPR plus mouth-to-mouth continuing unabated. Someone grabbed oxygen from the ship. Someone else found an O2 mask. It didn’t help and wasn’t working well so they went back to CPR plus mouth-to-mouth. They switched off, one after the other. The boat started up. We were underway. The efforts to bring him back continued. They worked on him for 90 minutes – I checked my watch – when finally we docked in Cat Cay and a doctor came aboard. He’d been briefed by the captain.

No one ever detected a pulse at any point from when he first went unconscious on the surface of the water.

The doctor said he was dead. They could try an air-evacuation to a hospital in Nassau or the States but heroic measures wouldn’t work. He’d been without oxygen for too long, his brain was no-doubt dead. He had died of either an embolism or a heart attack, or so he thought, based on what he’d been told.

The crew moved his body out of the path of foot traffic and covered him with a blanket. Inside, I cried for the first time, not the last.

The rest of what happened on this trip – the week’s delay getting his body back to the States, the funeral, managing the estate related issues, the friends, my family and so forth – is important detail. But it’s only detail. The big picture is my brother was dead.

Sometime during all this, I walked over to where his dive gear was and tried his regulator. I could take a breath off it but it was very hard to pull any air. And I was above the water. The pressure gauge on the console he had borrowed from the ship read 400 PSI.

Five days later, the coroner in Freeport rendered his decision. Paul died of drowning following a heart attack.

-- Tom Austin (Newhampster)

[The attached obituary appeared in the Washington Post]​

 

[Newhampster]

Sorry...I can't figure out how to attach and display two JPG files...so the picture and the obit aren't there...

 

[jhelmuth]

Tom,

I am truely sorry that you had to face such tragedy. May GOd be with you and help you. I'll pray that your brother is in his/her domain.

Jim

 

[Uncle Pug]

I am very sorry for your loss. May God bless and comfort you.

 

[hdtran]

Our deepest sympathies for your loss...

 

[NINman]

Very sorry for what you had to go though, our deepest sympathies.

 

[joeldonald]

I am saddened to hear about the loss of your brother.

Joel

 

[Quarrior]

Tom, I would like to extend my deepest sympathies for the loss of your brother. I hope this incident doesn't deter you from continuing to dive. I would venture a guess that Paul would want you to dive.

Brian

 

[Scubakevdm]

I'm so sorry for your loss.